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Sea Kayaks Techniques Bulletin Board
Re: Wheres your counterpart in Portland?
Posted By: Don Beale In Response To: Re: How Do You Teach Someone to Roll, Greg? (Greg Stamer)
Date: Friday, 8 September 2000, at 2:27 p.m.
Thanks Greg! You make it sound so much easier than flopping around on my own. Y'all are right, I gotta take a class...
: Hi David,
: I teach for the local outfitter and reserve at least an hour and a half for
: each student. My approach is fairly conventional and it is often modified
: radically depending on the needs of the student, but what follows would be
: a fairly normal session.: I start off by talking to the student, asking why they want to roll, where
: they paddle and what they know of rolling. This will sometimes help you
: discover paddlers with an incorrect mental image of the roll (e.g some
: paddlers will tell you things like "well I get the paddle to the side
: and yank down hard"). During the lecture, I try not to talk too much
: or go off on tangents. Over coaching can easily cause confusion.: I examine their kayak and discuss outfitting. Only about 30% of the kayaks
: that I see are outfitted correctly. I prefer to teach a nonrolling student
: in a large Dancer (old WW kayak that fits a wide range of body types),
: with an adjustable skirt. If an experienced student wants to refine an
: existing roll then I will often use their kayak, assuming that it is
: outfitted correctly. I will show them how to outfit the kayak, using duct
: tape to place temporary pads, and helping them find the correct footbrace
: position, a more common error than you would think. I see many extremes
: where the student expects to reach forward just to make contact with the
: pedals to students who wish to be jammed in the cockpit so tight that all
: lower body movement required for a hipsnap is impossible. Most people who
: learn on their own skip outfitting to get to the "interesting
: stuff", but a snip snap will have little effect if your efforts are
: not transmitted to your kayak.: I will give a demo in the pool of a slow sweep roll and have the student
: watch the entire roll several times then one component of the roll at a
: time, the tuck and how capsizing allows you to sweep on the "opposite
: side" directly from the tuck position (many analytical types have a
: hard time with this and will insist on moving the paddle over the deck
: until they understand the spatial concepts of the roll), the sweep, and
: how the torso comes up last -- pulled out of the water by the kayak rather
: than leading the charge. I will also show common errors so the student can
: identify them with a mental image if they occur later, such as paddle
: diving, too short a sweep and raising the head. I will end with a few more
: slow rolls. Before I get out of the kayak I will demonstrate the hipsnap
: drill of leaning over to the pool ledge and snapping up with my hands or
: just two fingers on the ledge. To illustrate the importance of keeping the
: torso in the water I will have the student come to the pool edge and I
: perform the same drill holding his hands so that he can feel how little
: pressure is required to snap up. I will also show how much more pressure
: is generated if I lift my head and try to lever myself up. Finally, I will
: ask for questions and have the student describe his new mental image of
: how a roll is performed. What you hear will sometimes surprise you and may
: cause you to backtrack.: With the student in the kayak and standing by his side I let him capsize when
: he is ready, and have him tap on the bottom of the hull when he wants up.
: I will right the kayak by throwing my body over the hull, grabbing the
: cockpit coaming and falling back to roll him up. This gets the student
: familiar with capsizing and builds confidence that he is safe. Next comes
: a wet exit if the student is a novice.: With the student in the water we perform the hipsnap drill until I am
: satisfied. Keep in mind that some people feel hipsnap in various parts of
: their lower body. My usual advice is to tell them to relax the left leg
: then fire the right, try to hit your head with your right knee. This gets
: them to move the torso toward the water instead of away from it. Instead
: of the pool ledge I will hold the paddle parallel to his kayak for the
: hipsnap drill. I then perform a similar drill but with the student holding
: a paddle at 90 degrees to the boat, first leaning over slightly and
: finally snapping up from a complete capsize. I point out that the paddle
: helps to give a rebound effect to the hipsnap. Unless the student
: deliberately tries to pull down on the paddle, I try to never say
: something like "don't pull on the paddle". Too many times what
: sticks in the head is "pull on the paddle". So instead I will
: emphasize what they need to do, rather than what they shouldn't do. Also,
: before I start to capsize the student, I will reinforce what we are about
: to do in simple language.: Then comes work on the sweep, first I will have the student perform some
: sweep strokes on the surface. Then I will ask them to relax and feel the
: motion of the paddle while I move it, from a capsized position. Students
: are usually tense and you may need to move to the front of their kayak and
: wedge the paddle away from the hull with your arms (Derek Hutchinson
: illustrates this well in his book on rolling). When the paddle reaches 90
: degrees I will rap on the hull to have the student perform their hipsnap
: and help them up if necessary.: I will then move to the right side of the kayak, just behind the student,
: have them tuck, and slowly lower them in the water toward me. At first I
: will hold them just above the water so that they can watch the paddle
: blade to keep it from diving, sweep to 90 degrees and snap up, with
: emphasis to make it flow together. Eventually I will capsize them
: completely and let them perform the roll on their own. Often they will be
: off and rolling at this point.: If there are problems at this stage I will often use a small, thin square of
: ethafoam, slotted to receive the paddle blade. This often leads to success
: but it can also reinforce bad habits, so I try to avoid it if possible. If
: the student can only roll with the float by the end of the session I will
: tell them to cut the foam down as they improve, until it is no long
: required. If they cut too much they can duct-tape it back on.: Some people find it more natural to hipsnap tucked forward, and others
: leaning back. I will work with their natural tendency on this. If a
: student is advanced I will often work on sculling rolls but most beginners
: and even a surprising number of intermediates don't have enough paddle
: control to make this work. If this is the case I will give them a goal to
: work on, such as sculling down and touching an ear to the water and then
: sculling back up. I will demonstrate that if they capsize and perform the
: same scull from underwater, it will roll them up quite effortlessly.: The real "magic" in teaching is developing an intuition of what
: will work best for a student as well as getting past common errors. For
: me, the key is to work to develop a proper mental image so the student is
: not confused. I also encourage the use of a face mask and nose clips for
: learning. If friends are learning together I prefer them to arrive
: together. The person who is waiting on the pool edge will learn a great
: deal about the rolling process and spotting errors. This will be useful if
: they work together in the future.: I hope this helps, I have found this method of rolling to work well and will
: look forward to hearing other methods and other tips.: Greg Stamer
: Orlando Florida
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